surface he should commence his next attack. He now seized the razor; and I could not avoid perceiving that the weapon was a perfectly new one, and had never before been used. I mention this because it created in my mind at the moment a slight suspicion of a terrific fact of which I was about to become the unhappy hearer.
He stood before me—legs apart, razor in hand—thrusting his arms to their full extent through the sleeves of his coat, in the attitude and with the gesture of a man who having to perform some deed requiring the exercise of great personal strength, wishes to ascertain beforehand that his powers are not to be impeded by the pressure of his garments! I thought—but further reflections were cut short by a powerful grasp on the top of my head, and a vigorous and awful sweep or scrape of the razor in a direction directly contrary to that in which I had been accustomed to operate upon my own face. The torture of this almost threw me into a state of coma!
He paused, and smiled, evidently much pleased at the success of his first move; and then, to heighten the value of the service he had just rendered me, he favoured me with the intelligence that it was really so long since he had handled a razor, he was quite out of practice.
Had one of the Sebastopol cannons presented to the city been fired off under my ear at that moment, I doubt whether I should have received a greater shock.
My first impulse was to leap up and rush away; but the lather, the want of shirt collar, and, added to these, the frightful quivering in my back, all put a negative on such a move. My only alternative was entire submission to the martyrdom I had to undergo, and I resigned myself. A second scrape in the same unusual direction assured me that the operator was again at his work; and, with closed eyes, I felt the razor tearing and travelling about in every direction but what appeared to me to be the right one.
Part the first—namely, the upper part of the face—being now finished, part the second was prepared by the brush and lather. In this interval the operator thought fit to favour me with a little conversation, and while stropping up the razor in front of me inquired,—
“Have you heard, sir, of the gentleman who had his throat cut here this morning!”
This put the finishing stroke to my already perturbed and excited fancy; and starting up from my chair, I shouted, “What! Here? In this very room? In this very chair?” half wild at the idea that I was occupying the place of the poor victim—barber-ously murdered through the incapacity, most probably, of the very man who who was now so coolly, nay, even so cheerfully, relating the circumstance as one of no uncommon occurrence!
What was there to protect me from a similar fate?
My Adonis, bursting into a fit of laughter, which, however, he took some pains to control, assured me that he had not meant “here” as indicating that room, but the city of Exeter. I subsided into the chair. My only other recollection of the ceremony, previous to its conclusion, is a request that I would keep my lips apart, lest my lower lip should be cut off! With this I complied, deeming the admission into my mouth of a tablespoonful or so of soapsuds a slight grievance in comparison of the threatened alternative. Words cannot express the relief I felt when a final wipe of the razor, accompanied with the welcome, welcome words, “That will do, sir,” satisfied me that the ordeal was concluded. After a comfortable ablution I inquired what I had to pay, when I was informed that a small and most reasonable charge would be received by the elegant lady as I passed through the outer shop.
Before separating, which we did with mutual goodwill and courtesy (he, doubtless, respecting me for the equanimity with which I had undergone his fearful and unwonted practice, and I grateful to him for having spared my life and taken only my beard), I learnt from my operator the following facts: that it was months since he had shaved any one; and that during his late apprenticeship of three years in London, in one of the most frequented hairdressers’ shops at the West End, he had only shaved four persons. He terminated this information with the following sage advice, to which I call the attention of my male readers: “If you want easy shaving, pick out the lowest barber’s shop you can find,—one, if possible, where they will shave you for one penny.”
Walking home with clean face and lightened heart, I met my wife, who, alarmed at my long absence, had come out in search of me. My first words were, “I’ll be my own barber henceforth;” and as we walked home together, I totally undeceived her as to her mistaken idea of the multiplicity of shaving-shops in Exeter, and gave her a good laugh over my adventures, in which I invite my readers to join.
FOR HONG KONG, CARE OF
AH LEEN AND CO., THIS SIDE UP.
